Having a great resume is key to being successful in your job search. Your resume is typically the first impression an employer has of you, so it’s important that it properly represents you. To help, we’ve listed five of the most common mistakes job hunters make on their resumes.

Too much personal information:

Employers are going to hire you based on your work experience, not on your favorite hobbies. Your resume should not have a “Personal Interests” category. In a job interview, if your interviewer mentions his love of volleyball, then that would be an appropriate time to mention you share the same interest.

It’s not necessary to mention your marital status or children on your resume. Again, a potential employer is only interested in your professional background.

Spelling and grammar mistakes:

The easiest way to get your resume rejected is to submit it with uncorrected spelling and grammatical errors. A potential employer will see a resume with a lot of mistakes and assume you are careless or sloppy in your work.

Make sure to edit your resume several times before submitting it to a company. It also helps to have someone else read it over, a new set of eyes are more likely to pick up on any small mistakes.

Length:

While it’s important that your resume is not excessively long, you should not exclude relevant work experience just to fit everything on one page. You don’t want a potential employer to discount you because you left off relevant experience.

At the same time, you don’t need to include every position you’ve had since the beginning of your career. Some of your past jobs might not be relevant to the current position you are applying for. Feel free to leave off the coffee bar you worked at through grad school if you have more relevant experience to include.

You also want to avoid having too short of a resume. If you are a recent college grad and have only worked at one or two positions, try to expand upon your responsibilities to lengthen your work history. Also, you can include extracurricular activities you participated in if the experience you gained from them seems relevant to your career.

Too busy:

Don’t use a ton of fonts and creative detail on your resume. Keep it simple, so that an employer’s eye can easily follow your work history down the page. There is no need to go crazy with bold and italicized fonts in different colors.

Avoid using borders and underlines to separate sections on your resume. As long as you have everything labeled appropriately, an employer will be able to understand it.

Missing critical information:

Make sure the header of your resume includes your full name, address, phone number and email address. If an employer doesn’t have your full contact information, they won’t be able to reach you to set up an interview or offer you a job.

List the month and year you started and finished each position on your resume. Job seekers avoid adding dates to their work history for various reasons, but this is a huge mistake! It makes employers feel that you are hiding something.

List the appropriate job title for each of your positions. New employers will most likely get employment verifications on your work history, so it’s important you have all the correct information. If there is a discrepancy with your job title or dates of employment, your new employer will be suspicious.

Keep these five easily avoidable mistakes on hand next time you update your resume and you’ll be sure to land a great job in no time!